Why is the American Media Failing to Tell Both Sides of the Vaccine Story?

There’s been a major onslaught from the media in the past few weeks linking the recent cases of measles in the U.S. and the fact that a minority of American parents chooses to forgo vaccines for their children.

On April 28, 2014, Forbes.com accused parents who don’t vaccinate as being part of an “anti-vaccine hysteria,” and contended that this “hysteria” “continues to do real damage to the lives of children around the world.”

On May 1, Michael Gerson, writing an op-ed in the Washington Post, argued that parents should not have the right to choose not to vaccinate.

But the most disappointing for me was from Stephen Colbert. Full disclosure: I love Colbert. He’s smart and funny and does a great job of finding unexpected ways to educate and entertain. But I was incredibly disappointed with the interview he did with Dr. Paul Offit, the Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, ending the show with Offit’s claim that we have the pharmaceutical companies to thank for our good health in America, because Big Pharma has created vaccines that allow our children to “lead longer, better, healthier lives.” Offit did not answer Colbert’s question about whether he was directly profiting from Big Pharma. Which he is, of course. Dubbed “Dr. Profit” by some activists, Offit is co-inventor of the RotaTeq vaccine and a co-holder of the patent on it.

What are the facts?

Considering the very small uptick and tiny number of new measles cases compared to the total population of the United States, “outbreak” is an exaggerated, misleading word, used to instill fear in parents and sell newspapers. In the Philippines, the WHO has identified about 20,000 cases of the measles. That is a genuine outbreak. If the American media were reporting honestly on these new cases of infectious disease, they would simply say, “we have seen some cases of the measles” or “a few dozen cases of measles.” But no one would click past the headline.

There have been 42 cases of measles confirmed in Ohio in 2014. The total population of Ohio is about 11.5 million people. Your chances of contracting the measles in Ohio are .000365 percent or 1 in 273,809.

There have been 59 cases of measles confirmed in California in 2014. The population of California is about 38 million. Your chances of getting the measles in California are even lower than in Ohio: .000155 percent or 1 in 644,068.

What you need to understand from all of this is simply that it is extremely unlikely you or your child will get the measles in the United States, whether you’ve chosen to vaccinate or not. And that if your child does get the measles, the chances of complications from what is a highly contagious but very mild disease in countries where people have access to clean water and good hygiene practices are tiny.

Why are we experiencing outbreaks of measles?

During a recent press briefing, the CDC acknowledged that 34 of the 129 cases reported so far here in the U.S. were importations involving both U.S. residents who traveled abroad and foreign visitors who came here. One of the questions that arose during the briefing was whether these outbreaks were related to people opting out of vaccines.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, M.D., from the CDC responded that people getting vaccinated against the measles are often those contracting the disease: “… in these outbreaks, some of the people have gotten all the doses they were supposed to, and they’re still getting measles.”

The CDC’s public acknowledgement that the MMR vaccine is not as effective as we think is detailed in a recent article in the Financial Times by Lawrence Solomon. Solomon reports that one of the main reasons we are seeing a resurgence of measles is because the vaccine is not working as well as previously thought.

Solomon quotes vaccine developer Dr. Gregory Poland, Professor of Medicine and founder and leader of Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group, who wrote in 2012 that, “outbreaks are occurring even in highly developed countries where vaccine access, public health infrastructure, and health literacy are not significant issues. This is unexpected and a worrisome harbinger — measles outbreaks are occurring where they are least expected.” The article continues:

“People’s failure to get vaccinated is deplorable, Dr. Poland often stresses. But the more fundamental problem stems from the vaccine being less effective in real life than predicted, with a too-high failure rate — between 2% and 10% don’t develop expected antibodies after receiving the recommended two shots. Because different people have different genetic makeups, the vaccine is simply a dud in many, failing to provide the protection they think they’ve acquired.

To make matters worse, even when the vaccine takes, the protection quickly wanes, making it unrealistic to achieve the 95%-plus level of immunity in the general population thought necessary to protect public health. For example, 9% of children having two doses of the vaccine, as public health authorities now recommend, will have lost their immunity after just seven and a half years. As more time passes, more lose their immunity. “This leads to a paradoxical situation whereby measles in highly immunized societies occurs primarily among those previously immunized,” Dr. Poland stated.”

Stephen Colbert and Paul Offit, you are missing the boat by blaming parents

The vitriol leveled against parents who opt-out of the measles vaccines is misguided and misplaced. If the vaccines are safe and effective, the people at risk when a family does not vaccinate are people who themselves have chosen not to vaccinate. Parents who choose not to vaccinate do not make the decision capriciously. They are typically well educated and well informed. Often they are better educated and better informed than the parents who follow the current CDC schedule. Yet the more the mainstream media ignores these parents’ concerns about the risks of the vaccines themselves, and the more headlines shouting BLAME BLAME BLAME on parents who are choosing to selectively vaccinate, the more thinking people will be encouraged to turn away from the entire vaccination program.

Why are some parents opting out?

I can tell you what moms and dads have been telling me.

Many are people who used to unquestioningly follow the rules.

They took their babies to every well baby visit. They gave their babies every vaccine the doctors recommended. And they watched their healthy babies getting sicker and sicker.

When these moms and dads asked their pediatricians what was going on, their doctors had no idea. When they asked if vaccines could have something to do with their child’s autoimmune disorder, flaring allergies, high-pitched screaming, high fevers, autism, ADHD, asthma, or other health problems, their doctors shook their heads and said, “impossible.”

“The same doctor was telling me he had no idea why my daughter was sick,” a mom of two told me, “but at the same time he was sure, absolutely positive, that vaccines had nothing to do with it.” This mom, a nurse practitioner married to a doctor living in Yreka, California, stopped vaccinating after reading several scientific studies showing vaccines can cause autoimmune disorders. “I was so angry,” she says, “and perplexed. How could our doctor have NO IDEA why my daughter was sick but be absolutely sure it was not because of vaccines?”

“I have seen vaccine injury first hand in the ICU’s and it always seems to simply be ‘mentioned’ that the child received a vaccine close to when this (fill in the blank) illness happened. The family typically mentions it and the medical staff scoff at them. That was a big reason why we chose not to vaccinate,” Kate Doubler, R.N., a mom who lives in Minnetonka, Minnesota and blogs at Real Food RN.

Health care professionals who are also parents are becoming increasingly uncomfortable following the CDC’s current vaccine schedule. Pediatricians themselves are also forgoing vaccines for their children. Susan McCreadie, M.D. shares her thoughts on vaccines:

“I am a mother first and a pediatrician second. This I have never forgotten.

I cannot parent in ways that make me uncomfortable, to make others comfortable. I made the connection that Kaitlin’s eczema would improve if I stopped stimulating her immune system with the vaccines. In addition to supplementing her with cod liver oil and probiotics daily, I also stopped vaccinations. Her eczema resolved and has never returned.

I chose as a mom and a pediatrician to stop vaccinating Kaitlin, and never to vaccinate Elle or Addison. These are my decisions. Are there risks? Sure there are risks. There are risks with EVERYTHING. That’s life. All three girls had whooping cough – not fun. Could I have prevented those 2 months of relentless coughing with vaccines? Maybe, maybe not. The family that spread it to our family was fully vaccinated against pertussis.”

My take home message to the American media: it’s time. Please do your homework and provide fair and balanced reporting.

And my take home message for parents: it’s time. Please do your homework too!

During my training to become a nurse, I was taught that vaccines were safe, effective, and saved lives. As a health care provider and parent, I have witnessed that this is not always the case. I find it incredibly tragic for a child—or an adult—to be severely disabled or to die from an adverse vaccine reaction. This is as tragic as it is for a child—or adult—to be harmed by a vaccine preventable disease. We health care professionals cannot say that the injury a child suffers from a vaccine is somehow worth it for the greater good. We cannot keep dismissing parents’ concerns.

It’s time for journalists to stop apologizing for harmful government practices and start doing their jobs to uncover what is going wrong with America’s vaccines.

So what is going wrong with America’s vaccines? In the coming weeks when we’ll be talking about potential complications with vaccines and information every parent needs to know before they vaccinate.

Lyn Redwood is co-founder of SafeMinds, a non-profit organization dedicated to justice, accountability, and integrity in science and public policy.

For more information about making informed vaccine decisions, visit SmartVax, a program of SafeMinds where parents can weigh the risks of vaccine injury versus the risks of getting a vaccine-preventable disease.

About the Author

Lyn Redwood, R.N., M.S.N., is co-founder and board member of the Coalition for SafeMinds and the National Autism Association. Ms. Redwood testified before the Government Reform Committee on “Mercury in medicine: Are we taking unnecessary risks?” in 2000, and before a Congressional sub-committee on health in 2003. She has published in the journals Neurotoxicology, Molecular Psychiatry, Medical Hypotheses, Mothering Magazine, and Autism-Aspergers Digest. Ms. Redwood has appeared on "Good Morning America," the Montel Williams Show, and has been interviewed by U.S News and World Report, Wired Magazine, People and numerous other publications. She is prominently featured in the award-winning book by David Kirby “Evidence of Harm.”

The problem with this article is that NO ONE today should be getting measles. That was fixed/ cured a while ago and the above statement that no one has died from it since 2005 is distressing. So someone actually died from measles in 2005??? In California? It is an outbreak, an unnecessary outbreak, and the unvaccinated elementary school children are putting newborns and babies at great risk for no qualified reason at all. There is clearly no valid proof of the autism being caused by vaccines.
Today it is against the law for a baby/toddler/child to be in a car without the proper carseat/booster. It is unfortunate that in a day where germs are even more dangerous than they used to be, we have to deal with a "retro" disease such as measles when we had actually found a "cure" - or really a prevention.

Wonderful article! I asked the pedi not to give my baby the hep-B vax at birth in 2000, he forgot to tell the nurses at the hospital, who vaxed her without need and without permission at midnight the day she was born. She reacted, as is very common, with screaming syndrome, vaccine encephalitis. I let her get the DTaP at 2, 4, and 6 months,, I wish I hadn't. She got pertussis anyway at 8 months at a La Leche League meeting, and gave it to me. But pertussis is only dangerous to some of the youngest newborns, less than three or four months old. It was uncomfortable, ten coughs per breath without being able to breathe until the fit was finally over, she coughed up vast sheets of slippery mucus, but felt fine in between fits. She coughed over a month, I coughed over two months, and then we got well. High-dose intravenous vitamin C treats pertussis even in the youngest newborns, and should be part of the universal treatment protocol. but isn't, because then there would be no reason for anyone to get the ineffective, dangerous pertussis vaccine. My daughter got the booster at 18 months, and it instantly erased her only words, and she was diagnosed with autism two months later.
I reacted to a tetanus booster with both arms being paralyzed the same day, brachial plexus neuropathy, and went on to develop MS. I got measles when I was six: 99% of all kids got it then, and all the adults had had it when they were children. It was no big deal. I wouldn't call it mild, it causes several days of moderate fever and then two and a half days of high fever, as high as 104 or 105, which people are not used to and reflexively try to lower with Tylenol or Ibuprofen or sponge baths. But it is that misguided practice that often causes complications, and even, rarely encephalitis. We have to let measles come back: it's better than hundreds of thousands crippled with autism for life (the hep-B, MMR, flu, and pertussis vaccines are the ones that are most associated with causing autism). If parents know that they have to keep measles patients warm in bed throughout the entire illness, well-hydrated, no fever reducers, and take vitamin A in two doses 24 hours apart, and keep the patient quiet at home for a full three weeks after the rash appears, because measles depresses the immune system for that long, complications would be rare. The Hib vaccine has caused our modern peanut allergy epidemic, and the pertussis vaccine our asthma epidemic. You're right, this is what the mainstream media should be reporting on, rather than just printing the pharma-vetted propaganda pieces issued to them. All parents MUST be aware that they have to do a lot more research than just accepting what the pediatrician and schools tell them, or what the mainstream parenting magazines publish. They should read Aviva Jill Romm's Vaccinations for advice on caring for the "childhood" diseases at home, and be aware that even serious diseases like meningitis and tetanus can be successfully treated with vitamin C in addition to antibiotics and other allopathic measures. And be prepared to fight to the death to defend our right to make the vaccine decision ourselves, and not be forced to submit to the mandates of vaccine corporations.

Lobelia tincture (small amounts taken frequently) provides noticeable relief to pertussis in hours and eliminates pertussis in a matter of days (also does wonders for COPD). No home should be without lobelia tincture!!! Also combats tetanus as does Natural Immunogenics Sovereign Silver (quickly!). Raised 8 children without vaccines and almost entirely without doctor bills. Been at this through 5 decades. The history of vaccination is a history of scientific fraud and of child abuse!

Dr. Paul Offit doesn't just profit from vaccines, he has also spent much time, energy, and money discrediting Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who has dedicated his life's work to healing vaccine injured children. I feel that is too important to not be in this article. Otherwise, good information in this article.

In a historic and ironic twist, just three days prior to this article the main 6 o'clock prime time evening news at Gannett (USA TODAY) owned CBS affiliate for the whole state of Arkansas broadcast the first ever mainstream American Media "to Tell Both Sides of the Vaccine Story". 'Vanishing Vaccinations' was a 4 minute news segment that was fair and balanced presenting both sides. AWE-mazing! http://www.thv11.com/story/news/health/2014/05/05/thv-extra-the-debate-on-vanishing-vaccinations-in-arkansas/7836729/ A festive day with this Cinco de Mayo news story!

The fear we have of unvaccinated children is not for our vaccinated children but for those who are too young/too sick to be vaccinated. They are completely defenseless and many of these diseases that may be minor for a healthy, older child can be devastating for infants.

Unvaccinated people do not necessarily carry the diseases- only in the rare instances they contract a disease. Recently vaccinated are the ones to worry about, as they are carrying and exposing others to the diseases.

Great article. I love the balance here, particularly as someone still very much on the fence about this issue. I feel stories are many times one-sided, but you did a great job balancing info. Lots to think about...

Terrific article! I couldn't agree more. This one sided, fear based journalism is the problem. Calling this a measles 'outbreak' is irresponsible journalism.
What I've never understood is why those who choose to vaccinate are so afraid of those of us who do not. All I can surmise is that they may perhaps not have full confidence in the efficacy of their vaccine.
-Libby

Thank you Lynn for an excellent article. I have noticed this trend myself. As a parent of a vaccine injured child in the autism spectrum I am actually angry about being marginalized even more by this frenzy created by the media. I know many parents who began vaccinating their children selectively after an older child was diagnosed with autism. The younger siblings are invariably healthier and brighter. Coincidence? Who knows?(

The tragic early death of Stephen Colbert's father, a physician and medical school dean, likely created psychological issues preventing him from objectively dealing with the concept of vaccine injuries.
“He does like medical research,” [Dr. Francis] Collins says of [Stephen] Colbert, whose late father had been a renowned medical doctor and served as associate director for extramural programs at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — one of the 27 institutes and centers Collins oversees.
http://digimag.govexec.com/article/The_Doctor_Is_In/1437613/164754/article.html
"His father, James William Colbert, Jr., was a doctor and medical school dean at Yale University, Saint Louis University, and finally at the Medical University of South Carolina where he served as vice president for academic affairs.
"On September 11, 1974, when Colbert was 10 years old, his father and two of his brothers, Peter and Paul, were killed in the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 while it was attempting to land in Charlotte, North Carolina.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert

Injection of disease antigens, poisons - known neurotoxins - and the undigested food proteins contained in vaccines, into the bloodstream, via the capillary beds of the muscles, bypasses a flood of natural immune reactions in the gut and the mucosal membranes, a main function of which is to prevent just such intrusions into the circulatory system. It's akin to sifting dirt into the gas tank of your car, then removing the fuel filter; a procedure that in no way could be beneficial, and is very likely to lead to disaster.
One of the routine protections afforded by the mucosal immune system is the elimination of potentially pathogenic organisms, to which each of us, vaccinated or not, is constantly exposed, before they infect - it's the ability to *not* get sick, circumvented by vaccination. It's as foolhardy as it sounds.

Our first son suffer brain damage for DPT.
Our next son do not get vaccines
Son # 2 gets mostly A's in school and a great runner for a white boy or any other color
Son # 1 is 21 and we still changes his diaper \does not walk or talk.
Son # 1 lot # 2A41126 had 11 deaths and 138 injuries report
The lot 2A41127 had the same
Son #1's lot reached the FDA critera 12 times to be recalled..it was not.
Vaccines for the most part;but not all, make one weaker and lower IQ
I am sure of this..I have a good grasp of the obvious \Son #1 Larrie\Son # 2 Tyler